Berlin Wall, Cold War Return to Checkpoint Charlie

By Catherine Hickley -
Oct 1, 2012

Checkpoint Charlie is once again home
to the Berlin Wall and the Cold War. Two new attractions aim to
cater for tourists hungry for information about the historic
site at the heart of the German capital.

The Cold War “BlackBox” is a temporary exhibition
installed by the cash-strapped city government until a museum
can be built there. Across the road is a fascinating panorama of
the Berlin Wall by the German-Iranian artist Yadegar Asisi.

It has taken 23 years for Berlin authorities to wake up to
Checkpoint Charlie’s potential for tourism. The city sold the
land there soon after German unification. Subsequent owners have
gone bankrupt, abandoning the patch to hawkers of Soviet flags
and fur military hats, doner kebabs, curried sausage and, of
course, allegedly genuine pieces of the Berlin Wall.

“It was a mistake to sell the land here in the early
1990s,” Culture Secretary Andre Schmitz said at the opening of
Asisi’s panorama. “We are now trying to make the best of it.”

Of Berlin’s 10 million visitors a year, 79 percent say
20th-century history is the main reason for their trip.
Checkpoint Charlie is high on the must-see list: After all,
World War III almost broke out here in 1961.

Dangerous Deadlock

Soviet and U.S. tanks, fully loaded and with orders to fire
if fired upon, were locked in a standoff lasting hours across
the border between East and West Berlin, about 100 yards (91
meters) apart. The deadlock ended when U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to withdraw
the tanks -- one-by-one, five yards at a time.

Checkpoint Charlie was the only crossing from East to West
Berlin for diplomats and non-German visitors. The old Cafe
Adler, once a hub of journalists and spies on the Western side
of the border, is now part of a Berlin cafe chain. Just down
Zimmerstrasse is a car-hire center offering ancient Trabants for
nostalgic spins around the city.

Outside the Haus am Checkpoint Charlie, the only museum on
the site until now, students pose as guards by a sign warning
“YOU ARE NOW LEAVING THE AMERICAN SECTOR.” The privately run
museum was founded in 1962 after the construction of the wall.

With its stories of daring and sometimes tragic escape
attempts by East Germans to the West, it attracted 870,000
visitors in 2010, the latest year for which figures are
available, making it the fourth-most visited museum in the city.

Death Strip

Asisi’s panorama should capture the imagination of
tourists, especially those too young to have known the Berlin
Wall first-hand. It’s probably the closest you can get to
experiencing the real thing today. From a platform in the
rotunda building visitors have a bird’s eye view over the wall
on a rainy day in the 1980s.

From Kreuzberg in the West, they look out across the
“death strip,” with its guard dogs, automatic machine guns and
watch-towers, toward the dark, dilapidated houses of East
Berlin, where just a few windows are warmly lit.

The strength of the panorama lies in its realistic
portrayal of everyday life in the shadow of the wall; of how
West Berliners learned to live with this monstrous symbol of
repression on their doorstep.

Children play ball against it, a graffiti artist sprays a
face on it, and a children’s farm, complete with horse and
stable, thrives alongside it. The protest culture of alternative
Kreuzberg -- then a haven for artists, squatters and young men
escaping military service -- is illustrated through banners
hanging from houses occupied to prevent their demolition.

Cozy Corner

The most ironic touch from today’s distanced perspective is
a bar called “Gemuetliche Ecke” (Cozy Corner), situated just
meters from the automatic machine guns and harsh lights of the
death strip. Probably no one batted an eyelid at the name at the
time -- a sign of how integrated the wall became in Berliners’
perception of their surroundings.

At the BlackBox across the road from the panorama, a jam-
packed multimedia exhibition stretches from North Korea via
Afghanistan to Cuba in its attempt to present the entire scope
of the Cold War. It provides information on the other sites in
Berlin where Cold War history is addressed.

On a shoestring budget of 330,000 euros ($387,000), its
expected life-span is two years. After that, the city government
wants to rent space in a complex planned by a group of Irish
developers and establish a permanent Cold War museum.

(Catherine Hickley writes for Muse, the arts and leisure
section of Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)